New owner details plans for Pullman Yard (Photos) (Video)

For decades, the historic Pratt-Pullman Yard in east Atlanta lay vacant except for graffiti artists and other trespassers. Now, Atomic Entertainment LLC’s Adam Rosenfelt and Maureen Meulen want to give the 27-acre property a new life while also paying tribute to its industrial roots.

Over the next nine to 12 months, the new property owners will kick off construction of a mixed-use district that will include one sound stage, a boutique hotel, an outdoor concert venue, residential, office and coworking space and an incubator. The project will cost more than $100 million to complete.

Although Pullman Yard will offer lots of resources for creative types like the sound stage, sound mixing studios and post production, it will be designed to draw people of all backgrounds, much like Ponce City Market or Krog Street Market.

“It will really be geared by a large majority toward Atlanta, the region, tourists and visitors rather than just the entertainment community,” Rosenfelt said. “The entertainment community is sort of our enhancement or attraction. It’s sort of like our Beltline.”

Los Angeles-based Atomic Entertainment officially bought the railyard from the state of Georgia for $8 million on July 13. Meulen and Rosenfelt previously toured the state looking for sites and considered a location at St. Simons Island, where they met Chitra Subbarayan, a vice president of brokerage with Ackerman & Co. The coastal Georgia site didn’t work out, but Subbarayan thought of them when the state was looking for a buyer for Pullman Yard and then helped facilitate the deal.

“They were very interested in historic property, and they wanted to create something like a nucleus of film that would connect with the community, something that was sort of a connecting dart,” Subbarayan said. “I told them this seemed to have most of the criteria they were looking for. The property has been sitting idle for so many years, and it will be exciting to see it come to life.”

Pullman Yard is already one of the state’s top filming locations, hosting blockbusters such as “The Hunger Games,” “Baby Driver” and films from the “Fast & Furious” franchise. Meulen and Rosenfelt say they are formalizing its designation as a sound stage. They intend to turn one of the buildings facing Rogers Street into a 20,000-square-foot stage complete with catwalks across the ceiling and soundproofing in the walls.

Atomic envisions the building behind and connected to the sound stage as the grand lobby of a hotel decorated with Pullman artifacts and lined with bars and restaurants that offer indoor and outdoor seating, which will be accessible through bay doors built into the structure.

“It will still have an industrial look, with some plush surroundings as well,” Meulen said. “We bid on the property for the buildings. We thought this would be an awesome community. We thought, ‘This is where we want to be working.’”

Atomic is in discussions with a boutique hotel developer, but Meulen and Rosenfelt would not say who it is. The hotel will have at least 110 rooms that will probably be spread throughout the back half of the property, including 10 treehouse-style rooms and some renovated Pullman cars.

“Some of these buildings are very old, from 1904 or 1911, and we’re not going to ask them to work too hard,” Rosenfelt said. “We’ll build ship-in-a-bottle style sort of within the structure.”

An old transfer table outside the lobby will be converted to a moving stage to host live performances. Atomic is even keeping the old operating booth for the transfer table, which it plans to convert to a DJ booth.

“For a Tuesday night symphony, the stage will move up to create intimacy,” Rosenfelt said. “On a Saturday afternoon when there’s a rock band, it moves back and people fill in. It creates such an incredible entertainment space.”

The rest of the property will be criss-crossed with biking and walking trails, and some open spaces will become residential spaces at a variety of price points, Meulen said. Atomic is currently in conversations with various residential developers.

Atomic is eyeing several of the railyard’s other structures as loft office space and co-working space, but Rosenfelt says it has no plans to separate the residential and commercial components.

“It will all flow together,” he said. “Trails will connect, we’ll turn the train tracks into bike paths and connect to other parts of the town and city. We want to feel inclusive.”

But Atomic can’t get to work just yet. Atlanta City Council is considering designating Pullman Yard as a historic landmark district, and on Oct. 4 it extended a temporary moratorium on alterations or demolition of properties on the site until Dec. 17.

Councilwoman Natalyn Archibong, who sponsored the proposal to extend the moratorium, said she’s excited for Atomic’s vision and the new jobs it could generate, but she’s concerned the group won’t preserve enough acres of green space.

“We’re excited to bring [Pullman Yard] back online and make it a part of the Kirkwood community,” Archibong said. “If we could just have the landmark and historical preservation coupled with preservation of green space, I think we’d have a very great outcome for the Atomic side and the community side.”

Rosenfelt said the trees are an important part of the campus, and Atomic is dedicated to retaining as much green space and open space as possible. The company is currently busy having structural engineers evaluate the old buildings, and Rosenfelt said he loves the idea of establishing a historic landmark district.

“That’s why we came here in the first place,” he said. “This is a great opportunity to preserve these buildings.”